Va. School Sees Board-Certified Teachers As Key to Turnaround

Lisa Holm is living a double life at Riverside
Elementary School here in suburban Northern Virginia. In the mornings,
she teaches reading and writing to a class of 16 1st graders. In the
afternoons, she helps to sharpen the skills of other teachers in the
building by leading group training sessions and offering one-on-one
help.

It's the best of both worlds, she says: "I have the opportunity to
teach my own students, but I also get to work with teachers throughout
the school to spread that influence."

Her workday also offers a glimpse at how some schools are empowering
teachers who, like Ms. Holm, are certified by the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards. The split schedule is part of an
effort here to put a struggling school on the path to success by
tapping the expertise of teachers who have been recognized by the
private, nonprofit board. Along with Ms. Holm, three other
board-certified teachers at the school wear the twin hats of classroom
teacher and professional coach.

The strategy at Riverside—which sits near George Washington's
estate that gives this community its name—points up a revolution
of sorts that's taking place in the teaching profession. As the number
of board-certified teachers in the country approximately doubles each
year, those growing legions are assuming roles that give them
increasing influence over the ways that teachers are trained and
evaluated.

"What I think the national board work has done is to demonstrate
that teachers can function as leaders in their profession in very
innovative and responsible ways," said James A. Kelly, who retired as
the board's founding president two years ago. "It's an important,
quiet, but powerful asset that the board has provided."

Ulterior Motive

The board itself exemplifies the increased ownership by teachers
over their profession. The program was launched in 1987 after the
Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy suggested that educators
ought to have their own voluntary system of national certification,
much the way that the medical field recognizes doctors in certain
specialties.

Classroom teachers played leading roles in drafting the board's
certification standards and in designing its assessment—a
10-month-long procedure in which candidates document their work in
lengthy portfolios, submit videotapes of themselves engaged in
instruction, and sit down for a series of paper-and-pencil tests.
Teachers also make up a majority of the panel that governs the
program.

But the motive, say organizers, wasn't just to put another feather
in the caps of a few good teachers.

"The idea," Mr. Kelly said, "was that the process should increase
leadership opportunities for teachers who are excellent, and that the
system would help to enrich the roles that these teachers can play in
schools."

That appears to be just what's happening, based on a survey the
board commissioned last year. In polling more than 2,000 teachers who
earned certification in 1999 or before, the research showed that
virtually all—99.6 percent, to be exact—were involved in at
least one type of leadership activity. Nationwide, some 9,500 teachers
are now board-certified.

By far, the most frequently cited roles were those involving
training other educators on the job. More than 80 percent said they
took part in either evaluating or assisting teachers who were new to
the field, whose skills needed improvement, or who were seeking board
certification themselves.

A growing number of state and district policies are accelerating the
trend. Along with the pay supplements offered in many places to
teachers who pass the board's assessment, some systems have added
additional bonuses for board-certified teachers who take on certain
leadership roles.

Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York state all have
financial incentives aimed at encouraging such teachers to work as
mentors to other educators. Some local policies, meanwhile, put
board-certified teachers on a fast track toward leadership tasks in
their districts. In Cincinnati, for example, they're automatically
eligible to apply for "lead teacher" status, opening the door to
assuming new responsibilities, including training and evaluating other
educators.

Despite this growing prominence, the board has its skeptics. Critics
argue that its assessment relies too heavily on teaching processes,
while neglecting to measure whether a candidate manages to improve
students' performance, as shown by test-score gains.

"The board does not give us what we need to identify outstanding
teachers," said Michael Poliakoff, the president of the National
Council on Teacher Quality, a conservative public-policy group based in
Falls Church, Va. "It identifies certain aspects of strong teaching and
gives a wonderful opportunity for those teachers to be recognized. But
it is tragically weak in giving us a complete picture."

But others believe that teachers with the skills and traits
emphasized by the board are precisely those most likely to raise
achievement. Here in Virginia's 161,000-student Fairfax County school
system, officials have drafted an improvement plan for Riverside
Elementary that gives top billing to the certification process of the
nearby Arlington, Va.-based program.

Not only has the school gained four teachers like Ms. Holm, but it
also encouraged others there to seek national certification by offering
them extensive training on the board's standards and procedures. Seven
Riverside teachers are now finishing up the program's assessment, and
if they all pass, one-quarter of the school's teachers could be
board-certified next year.

Riverside also has formed partnerships with the National Education
Association and George Washington University, both based in Washington,
which are lending technical aid to the effort. The elementary school
has agreed to host teachers-in-training from George Washington, and the
university's education school is carrying out a research project to
determine the effect of the strategy.

Ultimately, the aim is to improve student learning. Based on student
tests scores, Riverside is the second-lowest-performing elementary
school in the Fairfax County district. About 67 percent of its 515
students are members of minority groups, and more than one-third are
eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches.

Anyone driving past Riverside might be surprised that lagging
achievement is a problem. Its campus abuts a development of new houses
with two-car garages, some of which have listed at nearly $300,000. But
most of the families in the immediate area send their children to
private school, while many of those whose children attend Riverside
work in the hotel and retail businesses along a nearby commercial
corridor, said Saundra Culmer, the principal.

By gearing the teaching in her school more toward the expectations
of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Ms. Culmer
hopes to raise the level of instruction enough to level the playing
field for her students.

"What I want," she said, "is to make this a model school that people
are dying to get into."

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